(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus for concentrating a specific ingredient-dissolved liquid. The invention relates particularly to an apparatus for concentrating a specific ingredient-dissolved liquid containing a specific ingredient recovered in sea water.
(2) Related Art Statement
There are various ingredients dissolved in sea water. Recovery and effective utilization of such ingredients are effective particularly in case that land resources are poor. In the prior art, it has been difficult to take up sufficient ingredients from sea water because of low performance of adsorbents. However, recently, researches and development of adsorbents have been proceeded, resulting in development of excellent adsorbents capable of recovering ingredients in sea water.
As such adsorbents, adsorbents for adsorbing lithium or uranium are known, for example. Lithium and uranium are almost uniformly dissolved in sea water, but their concentrations are extremely low. Therefore, an adsorbed specific ingredient, for example, adsorbed lithium, desorbed with a desorbing liquid to obtain a specific ingredient-dissolved liquid in which the specific ingredient is dissolved, the concentration is still low. Thus, the specific ingredient-dissolved liquid needs to be concentrated. Formerly, the specific ingredient-dissolved liquid has been directly concentrated with a heating boiler.
However, when the specific ingredient-dissolved liquid is directly concentrated with the heating boiler as in the prior art, it is advantageous in effecting the concentrating treatment in a short time period, which however requires a large amount of energy. Use of a large amount of energy affords adverse effect upon the concentrating cost. Therefore, an apparatus which enables concentration while energy is reduced as much as possible has been demanded. However, such an energy-saving apparatus for concentrating specific ingredient-dissolved liquid has not been known yet.